Knowers of Torah From The Cracks and Gutters
Who knows Torah—and how do you know you know? Who gets to claim they know it? What is Judaism if not an interpretive tradition which reinvents itself through the mouths of those who feel the Torah is not over there, not far away, not even in heaven—but right here, very near?
It is crucial that those who feel the least at the center of Jewish proliferation assert our Torah and speak it with authority.
Some might call this holy or spiritual chutzpah, the notion that we can and should act audaciously and courageously in our pursuit of our own tradition, taking action that brings olam haboh, the world to come.
As I've begun to write this newsletter, I'm challenging myself to turn out a comic-essay every other month, but to also allow myself the grace of publishing art from earlier chapters in my life which never previously saw the light of day. This week, I'm sharing "Knowers of Torah," scans of an eight-page comic I wrote in 2021 in my compbook journal. It already feels like another lifetime, yet the topic feels even more apt as ethnonationalism deepens its chokehold on Judaism while related Jewish communal compromises with white supremacy threaten all that I hold dear.
In publishing a relatively unedited comic I made without assuming it'd ever be shared with an audience, I hope to model my own spiritual chutzpah, to believe that some of the intimately personal (and even rough, less-perfect) works I've made still contain Torah worth revealing.
Revelation requires an intense knowledge of self. It also requires you belief that the truth in your bones is one worth acting upon and protecting. This is not an individualistic pursuit, but one that is undertaken out of love for self and other. Torah is subjective and collective. The force that connects my neshama, my soul, to yours is the same force that helps me orient what actually feels like liberation and what is a klipah, an obfuscation or husk around holiness which hides it from sight.
The Baal Shem Tov would say, "The greatest exile is to not know you're in exile at all." Those who often feel the most comfortable within the worlds they've been born into are the least equipped to understand the problems, truths, and exit routes of exile. It is ironic to me that those who feel the most at ease claiming the Jewish tradition are people who have never felt that their relationship to Judaism was contingent on something tenuous, have never had it threatened or feared it could be taken away.
By that same token, those who understand exile most intimately are those who cannot forget it. So much of the heart of this tradition is about yearning. Of course it is clearest to those who have felt the most alienated, the furthest away. The distance is the seed of longing.
From where I'm standing as a transsexual, it's a lot clearer which Torah brings us closer to redemption and what teachings require greater revelation before they can truly serve us (or Hashem—which really does feel like the same thing). We must express d'veikus, cleaving, to that compass-like knowledge of holiness.
There is one letter difference between Golah, exile, and Geulah, redemption: the aleph, the silent letter where G-d's breath dwells. Aleph is the crack in the world, the break in a voice. Whoever lives nearest to that aleph in the brokenness—inside the cracks, gutters, and edges—holds the deepest knowledge of redemption. There lies the still small voice. The Torah that sings from the cracks and gutters is a Torah that liberates everyone. And if it doesn't do that, it's not l'shem shamayim, for the sake of heaven.
הוּא הָיָה אוֹמֵר, אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי. וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי. וְאִם לֹא עַכְשָׁיו, אֵימָתָי
Hillel used to say: If I am not for myself, who is for me? But if I am for my own self only, what am I? And if not now, when?
That's the invocation of Pikei Avos 1:14 — each of us has a unique letter in creation must be revealed. It is personal and specific, but part of a broader collective. And we need you to reveal it, with no time to waste.
May those of us who have felt the most marginalized and maligned receive the spiritual chutzpah required to urgently reveal Torah through our mouths in a deluge of great teaching and great redemption.
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